In order to promote engagement and draw attention to the importance of primary sources, a number of archives, museums, and libraries have created interactive digital exhibits. These electronic platforms allow users to connect with history on a more personal level and better understand how historians use primary source materials to interpret the past. Below is a sampling of interactive tools.
-Colonial Williamsburg: Online Exhibits and Multimedia
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has created a number of online exhibits to allow users to interact with historical objects. Some of the exhibits include Historic Threads, Conserving the Murray Sisters, Coins and Currency in Colonial America, Portrait of George Washington, and Mapping Colonial America.
-Colonial Williamsburg: Tour the Town
Tour the Town is an interactive map of Colonial Williamsburg . Users can use the site to explore the city's rich history and modern properties.
-Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives
This exhibit features historical eyewitness accounts pulled from the National Archives' collections.
"Find a Grave's mission is to find, record and present final disposition information from around the world as a virtual cemetery experience."
-Histories of the National Mall
Histories of the National Mall takes you on a tour of the National Mall's rich past by offering historical maps, a chronology of past events, short bios of significant individuals, and episodes in the Mall's history. The site is designed for mobile devices while touring the Mall, or at home on a desktop browser.
Historypin is a free website that allows people to share and celebrate local history. It consists of a shared archive, a mutually supportive community and a collaborative approach to engagement with local history. Users are able to upload historical video, sounds, and photographs.
Mapping Colonial America is produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The exhibit consists of 22 maps which chronicle Colonial America.
-The National Archives Experience: Digital Vault
The National Archives' Digital Vault is a interactive platform consisting of 1,200 documents, photographs, drawings, maps, and other materials which are all linked to the Archives' online catalog.
-Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
The Salem Witch Trials' Maps of Salem allows visitors to explore the areas affected by the Salem witch trials (1692-1693).
-USGS Historical Topographical Map Explorer
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has digitized more than 1000,000 historical topographic maps of the United States and made them available on an interactive platform. These historical maps are often useful to scientists, historians, environmentalists, genealogists and others researching a particular geographic location or area. The National Geospatial Program (NGP) is accurately cataloging and creating metadata to accompany high-resolution, geo-referenced digital files representing the legacy lithographic maps.